Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

Miri bowed her head. But I just want to help ! Strange. That had been the Orozco kid's whine. To Miri. Okay, maybe he wasn't a complete jerk. And maybe he could help. But there was something else he'd said, and right now it was much more important… Yes! Suddenly Miri saw how she could turn defeat into victory. She looked up into her grandmother's face and smiled innocently. "Did you know, Lena… that You-Know-Who is learning to wear?"

14

Even after three weeks, Robert and Juan still did most of their studying in person, right after classes let out. They would walk out to the bleachers and one ignoramus would endeavor to teach the other.

Occasionally Fred and Jerry Radner would tag along, unofficial third and fourth ignoramuses. The twins had teamed with each other in Chumlig's composition class, but they seemed to take innocent pleasure in following Robert's progress, offering advice that was more colorful than Juan's, but rarely as useful.

Then there was the fifth ignoramus. Xiu Xiang had chickened out of Creative Composition, but she was still taking her other courses at Fairmont. And like Robert, she was learning to wear; nowadays she wore a frilly, beaded blouse — another kind of Epiphany beginner's outfit. She was there the afternoon when Robert and Juan ran into the Chileans. This was out on the track that circled the athletics field. No one else seemed to be around; the varsity teams wouldn't be here for a while yet.

Miri — > Juan: Hey! Wake up, Orozco. Flag down .

Juan — > Miri: Sorry, I didn't see them.

Miri — > Juan: You missed them yesterday, too. Flag them before they shift to the Radners. I told you these guys would make good practice.

Juan — > Miri: Okay, okay!

"Hey," Juan said abruptly, "Dr. Gu, Xiu. Look!" He shipped an enum capability to Robert's Epiphany. It was just like the targets they'd been working with the last few days. The kid claimed that if you practiced, this kind of interaction was as natural as looking at where another person was pointing. It wasn't that easy for Robert Gu. He stopped and squinted at the icon. By default that should force access. Nothing. He tapped on his phantom keypad. He noticed Xiang, a few feet away, doing the same.

… And then suddenly there were a half-dozen students in evidence, all jabbering in Spanish.

Miri — > Juan, Lena, Xiu: Okay, I think Robert sees them.

Lena — > Juan, Miri, Xiu: I see them! Can you, Xiu?

Xiu — > Juan, Lena, Miri: no yet i must —

Miri — > Juan, Lena, Xiu: Don't try to message back, Dr. Xiang. You're not fast enough yet; Robert will get suspicious. Just talk out loud, as if to him and Juan.

Xiang was silent for a moment, her fingers still tapping. She was even worse at wearing than he was. But then she said, "Yes, I do see them!" She glanced at Juan Orozco. "Who are they?"

"Friends of Fred and Jerry, from way south. Chile."

Miri — > Juan: Tell them to play synch monster.

Juan — > Miri: Okay.

Juan rattled Spanish at the visitors, almost too fast for Robert to understand. Something about helping beginners with a monster.

The others' Spanish was even less intelligible. But maybe that didn't matter. The visitors stepped back, and the space was filled with a shambling purple something .

Xiang laughed. "I see that too. But the creature… it's not even pretending to be real."

Robert leaned close to the lopsided vision. "It's pretending to be a stuffed animal," with crudely stitched seams and tufts of stuffing peeking from between the joints. But the vision was almost seven feet tall, and when Robert approached, it shambled back from him.

Robert laughed, "I've read about these things."

Lena — > Juan, Miri, Xiu: I looked it up, Xiu. You move, it moves. But each of you can only control a part of it.

"Oh." Xiu Xiang stepped forward, blocking the creature's retreat. Its rear legs stopped but the front kept pushing, and it almost tipped over.

Miri — > Juan: Say the goal is to make it do a graceful dance.

Juan said, "The goal is we all cooperate to make it move. Dance around it, Xiu."

She did. Music followed her motion. The creature's rear legs reengaged, and its butt end seemed to track her march. The children from Chile thought that was hilarious.

When Robert cocked his wrist and wiggled a beat, the music came up.

Juan began clapping, and the beast's shoulders twitched to the music. The children from the Far South watched silently for a moment. They looked as solid as the real Juan and Xiu Xiang, but they were no more expert than most San Diego users. Their shadows went the wrong way, and their feet had only a casual acquaintance with the surface of the lawn. But after an instant, the Chileans seemed to hear the music and began clapping too. And now the critter's tail — their domain in this game? — began pumping up and down.

Robert expanded on his gestures, grabbing control of the creature's floppy claws. For a moment, the monster danced in synch with the music, each gesture consistent. But the network delay was about half a second, and worse, it varied randomly from a tiny fraction of a second to well over a second. The dance got wilder as errors were corrected and overcorrected, until the tail was whacking at the heel claws. The creature rotated onto its back and its legs flailed in random directions.

Lena — > Juan, Miri, Xiu: That was fun!

"Damn!" said Robert.

But everybody was laughing, and not at any particular victim. One by one, the faraway children disappeared, till only the real people were left, Robert and Juan and Xiu Xiang.

"We could have done better, Juan!"

Lena — > Xiu: See? He's always complaining. Give him another minute and he'll be making sly claims that you are to blame for everything that went wrong.

Juan was still laughing. "I know, I know. But the network link was basura más odiosa . There are game companies who give you cheapnet for free, because it makes everyone so mad they upgrade to paying status."

"Well then why did we try?"

"Hey, to practice. For fun."

Robert remembered the inept international choir down at UCSD. "We should have used a metronome. Can you bring these kids back?"

"Nah, we were just… like waving to each other. You know, in passing."

In passing. "I didn't see them at all until you showed them to me. How busy is the aether?" Robert slashed the air with his hand. How many realities burbled immanent?

"Out here in public, it's lots too busy to view all at once. There's probably three or four hundred nodes in line of sight of your Epiphany. Each of those could manage dozens of overlays. In a crowd there'd be hundreds of active realities, and bazillions potentially — "

Miri — > Juan: Don't go there. My grandfather is smart enough to add up teeny clues and guess at us invisibles.

Juan — > Miri: Yeah? Well you're making one clue yourself. Showing Mrs. Gu visible to Xiu just confuses her. Look how she avoids where you have Lena standing.

The boy seemed to lose his train of thought. "Of course, when there are just two or three people around, the laser traffic is mostly just a potential."

They walked farther along the track, the boy demonstrating how to surf through the public views. Robert and Xiu Xiang practiced at his direction, sometimes achieving a consensus view. Xiang seemed more relaxed than at the beginning of the walk; at least she was walking a bit closer to Juan and Robert.

But Xiu didn't respond when Robert joked, "I'd say we're getting to be truly awful."

Lena — > Xiu: See!

Robert wondered at what a weird duck this Xiang woman was.

Xiu Xiang was weird in other ways. Though she had dropped the composition class because she was too shy to perform in front of others, she loved the shop class. Every day she seemed to be playing with something new from the class inventory. That was the only time she was clearly happy, smiling and humming to herself. Some of her projects were obvious to the new Robert, some he could make good guesses about. She was happy to explain them. "Maybe there aren't any 'user-serviceable parts' inside," she said, "but what I've built, I understand!" She was doing the equivalent of a student semester project every day, and enjoying every minute of it.